Part 3
Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why, with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my name, Showing their birth and where they did proceed? O, know, sweet love, I always write of you, And you and love are still my argument: So all my best is dressing old words new, Spending again what is already spent; For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is told.
—Shakespeare.
* * * * *
How oft as we sat ’round the board, My dear old friends and I, We drew from Memory’s sweet, sad hoard, Enough to make us sigh. And merry wit was silenced there, By some vague haunting thought, Which seemed to fill the very air, Around, unbid, unsought.
And so may this sweet, happy hour, My dear new friends, I pray, Be like some book-pressed fragile flower, That Youth has lain away; But when life’s book is widely spread, This sweet but faded hour, Will bring sad thoughts of moments fled, As does the wilted flower.
* * * * *
I never did repent for doing good, Nor shall not now; for in companions That do converse and waste the time together, Whose souls to bear an equal yoke of love, There must be needs a like proportion Of lineaments, of manners, and of spirit.
—Shakespeare.
* * * * *
How say ye “We loved once,” Blasphemers—Is your earth not cold enow, Mourners, without that snow? Ah, friends, and would ye wrong each other so? And could ye say of some whose love is known, Whose prayers have met your own, Whose tears have fallen for you, whose smiles have shone So long,—“We loved them ONCE”?
—E. B. Browning.
* * * * *
The strong necessity of time commands Our services awhile; but my full heart Remains in use with you.
—Shakespeare.
* * * * *
Self-denial, for the sake of self-denial, does no good; self-sacrifice for its own sake is no religious act at all.... Self-sacrifice, illuminated by love, is warmth and life, the blessedness and the only proper life of man.
—Robertson.
* * * * *
I think that good must come of good, And ill of evil—surely unto all In every place or time, seeing sweet fruit Groweth from wholesome roots, or bitter things From poison stocks: yea, seeing, too, how spite Breeds hate—and kindness friends—or patience peace.
—Arnold.
* * * * *
Unfading joys thy lot should crown, If lips like mine could call them down.
—Wilson.
* * * * *
Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, I will die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.
—Ruth to Naomi.
* * * * *
But of your goodness pray to this give heed, That friendship doth in friendship find its meed.
* * * * *
Let thy name Dwell ever in my heart and on my lips, Theme of my lyre and burden of my song.
—Ovid.
* * * * *
Some love the glow of outward show, Some love mere wealth, and try to win it; The house to me may lowly be, If I but like the people in it.
What’s all the gold that glitters sold, When linked to hard or haughty feeling? Whate’er we’re told, the nobler gold Is truth of heart and manly dealing.
Then let them seek, whose minds are weak, Mere fashion’s smile, and try to win it; The house to me may lowly be, If I but like the people in it.
—Swain.
* * * * *
There is no such certain evidence of friendship as never to overlook the sins and failings of our brethren. Hast thou seen them at enmity? Reconcile them. Hast thou seen them set on unlawful gain? Check them. Hast thou seen them wronged? Stand up in their defense. It is not on them but on thyself thou art conferring the chief benefit. It is for this purpose that we are friends—that we may be of good service to one another. A man will listen in a different spirit to a friend. An indifferent person he will regard perhaps with suspicion, and so in like manner an instructor, but not so a true friend.
—St. Chrysostom.
* * * * *
Friendship, love and piety, ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy; they ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence.
—Novalis.
* * * * *
I weigh my friend’s affection with mine own.
—Shakespeare.
* * * * *
As ships meet at sea,—a moment together, when words of greeting must be spoken, and then away upon the deep,—so men meet in this world; and I think we should cross no man’s path without hailing him, and if he needs, give him supplies.
—Henry Ward Beecher.
* * * * *
Are we ever truly read, save by the one that loves us best? Love is blind, the phrase runs. Nay, I would rather say, love sees as God sees, and with infinite wisdom has infinite pardon.
—Ouida.
* * * * *
As earth pours freely to the sea Her thousand streams of wealth untold Glad that its very sands are gold. So flows my silent life to thee.
* * * * *
The best conduct a man can adopt is that which gains him the esteem of others without depriving him of his own.
—Talmud.
* * * * *
And the finest fellow of all would be the one who could be glad to have lived because the world was chiefly miserable, and his life had come to help some one who needed it.
—Eliot.
* * * * *
Talk not of wasted affection, Affection never was wasted; If it enrich not the heart of another, Its water returning Back to their springs, like the rain, Shall fill them full of refreshment; That which the fountain sends forth Returns again to the fountain.
—Longfellow.
* * * * *
Beyond all wealth, honour, or even health, is the attachment we form to noble souls; because to become one with the good, generous, and true, is to become in a measure good, generous, and true, ourselves.
—Arnold.
* * * * *
They who love best need friendship most, Hearts only thrive on varied good; And he who gathers from a host Of friendly hearts his daily food, Is the best friend that we can boast.
—Holland.
* * * * *
And so farewell! perchance on Earth God’s finger—as ’twixt thee and me— Will never make that wonder clear Why thus it drew me unto thee.
—Memnon.
* * * * *
Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship Let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest.
—Longfellow.
* * * * *
We become like those whom we habitually admire.
—Drummond.
* * * * *
Have love; not love alone for one, But man as man thy brother call, And scatter like the circling sun Thy charities on all.
—Schiller.
* * * * *
I come here as your friend,—I am your friend.
—Longfellow.
* * * * *
Do not form friendships hastily, but once formed hold fast to them. It is equally discreditable to have no friends, and to be always changing one’s acquaintances.
* * * * *
It takes a lifetime of close intimacies to convince each of us, of our absolute, essential loneliness; to make us feel that speech is only clamour, that intercourse only means points of contact, that solitude is often our only substitute for peace.
—Esler.
* * * * *
Only a shelter for my head I sought, One stormy winter night; To me the blessing of my life was brought, Making the whole world bright. How shall I thank thee for a gift so sweet, O dearest Heavenly Friend? I sought a resting-place for weary feet, And found my journey’s end.
Only the latchet of a friendly door My timid fingers tried; A loving heart, with all its precious store, To me was opened wide. I asked for shelter from the passing shower,— My sun shall always shine! I would have sat beside the hearth one hour,— And the whole heart was mine!
—Ruckert.
* * * * *
Friends! I have but one, and he, I hear, is not in town; nay, can have but one friend, for a true heart admits of but one friendship as of one love. But in having that friend I have a thousand.
—Wycherley.
* * * * *
We have been friends together, In sunshine and in shade; Since first beneath the chestnut trees In infancy we play’d. But coldness dwells within my heart— A cloud is on thy brow; We have been friends together— Shall a light word part us now?
We have been gay together; We have laugh’d at little jests; For the fount of hope was gushing, Warm and joyous in our breasts. But laughter now hath fled thy lip, And sullen glooms thy brow; We have been gay together— Shall a light word part us now?
We have been sad together— We have wept with bitter tears, O’er the grass grown graves, where slumber’d The hopes of early years. The voices which are silent there Would bid thee clear thy brow; We have been sad together— O what shall part us now?
—Norton.
* * * * *
For every leaf the loveliest flower, Which beauty sighs for from her bower— For every star a drop of dew— For every sun a sky of blue— For every heart, a heart as true.
—Bailey.
* * * * *
Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth: And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny, and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love, Doth work like madness in the brain. And thus it chanced, as I divine, With Roland and Sir Leoline. Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart’s best brother: They parted—ne’er to meet again! But never either found another; To free the hollow heart from paining— They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between, But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been.
—Coleridge.
* * * * *
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste; Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night, And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe, And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight; Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er The sad account of fore-bemoan’ed moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear Friend, All losses are restored, and sorrows end.
—Shakespeare.
* * * * *
Since we deserved the name of friends, And thine effect so lives in me, A part of mine may live in thee And move thee on to noble ends.
—Tennyson.
* * * * *
Love is the greatest of human affections, and friendship the noblest and most refined improvement of love.
* * * * *
Sheik Schubli, taken sick, was borne one day Unto the hospital. A host the way Behind him thronged. “Who are you?” Schubli cried. “We are your friends,” the multitude replied. Sheik Schubli threw a stone at them; they fled. “Come back, ye false pretenders!” then he said; “A friend is one who, ranked among his foes, By him he loves, and stoned, and beat with blows, Will still remain as friendly as before, And to his friendship only add the more.”
—Alger, from Jamee.
* * * * *
In all misfortunes the greatest consolation is a sympathizing friend.
—Cervantes.
* * * * *
Friendship is constant in all other things Save in the office and affairs of love.
—Shakespeare.
* * * * *
Ah, how good it feels, The hand of an old friend!
—Longfellow.
* * * * *
The poor, the humble, and your dependents, will often be afraid to ask their dues from you; be the more mindful of it yourself.
—Helps.
* * * * *
In pure friendship there is a sensation of felicity which only the well-bred can attain.
—La Bruyere.
* * * * *
Hitherto doth love on fortune tend; For who not needs shall never lack a friend.
—Shakespeare.
* * * * *
Such help as we can give each other in this world is a debt we owe each other.
—Ruskin.
* * * * *
Keep your undrest, familiar style For strangers, but respect your friend.
—Patmore.
* * * * *
Let our old acquaintance be renewed.
—Shakespeare.
* * * * *
Here is a dear, a true industrious friend.
—Shakespeare.
* * * * *
The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about friends. They mean associates and confidents merely. Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. No professions or advances will avail.
—Thoreau.
* * * * *
Ah, friend, let us be true To one another! For the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.
—Arnold.
* * * * *
Who in want a hollow friend doth try, Directly seasons him his enemy.
—Shakespeare.
* * * * *
First of all things for friendship there must be that delightful, indefinable state called feeling at ease with your companion,—the one man, the one woman out of a multitude who interests you, meets your thoughts and tastes.
—Duhring.
* * * * *
One whom I knew intimately, and whose memory I revere, once in my hearing remarked that, “unless we love people we cannot understand them.” This was a new light to me.
—Rossetti.
* * * * *
I can nothing render but allegiant thanks My prayers to Heaven for you, my loyalty, Which ever has, and ever shall be, growing, Till death, that winter, kill it.
—Shakespeare.
* * * * *
A man’s love is the measure of his fitness for good or bad company here or elsewhere. Men are tattooed with their special beliefs, like so many South Sea Islanders; but a real human heart with divine love in it, beats with the same glow under all patterns of all earth’s thousand tribes.
—Holmes.
* * * * *
The love of man to woman is a thing common and of course, and at first partakes more of instinct and passion than of choice; but true friendship between man and man is infinite and immortal.
—Plato.
* * * * *
It is a sad thing that there comes a moment when misery unknots friendships. There were two friends; there are two passersby!
—Hugo.
* * * * *
Too late we learn—a man must hold his friend Unjudged, accepted, faultless to the end.
—O’Reilly.
* * * * *
For, believe me, in this world, which is ever slipping from under our feet, it is the prerogative of friendship to grow old with one’s friend.
—Hardy.
* * * * *
A common friendship—Who talks of a common friendship? There is no such thing in the world. On earth no word is more sublime.
—Drummond.
* * * * *
Friendship survives death better than absence.
—Senn.
* * * * *
When friendship goes with love it must play second fiddle.
* * * * *
The earth to the songs of the poet Resounds in a deathless tune, Though hearts be upon or below it— Though the Winter be here or the June. Of the numberless songs that are ringing, Let the cadence of one song flow For the Aprils fled and the living and dead— The friends of the Long Ago.
—Hale.
* * * * *
Devotion to a friend does not consist in doing everything for him, but simply that which is agreeable, and of service to him, and let it only be revealed by accident.
—Unknown.
* * * * *
Never to have encountered a constancy equal to one’s own is tragic.
* * * * *
The ring of coin is often the knell of friendship.
—Unknown.
* * * * *
The sweet sincerity of joy and peace which I draw from this alliance with my brother’s soul, is the nut itself, whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation, and honor its law.
—Emerson.
* * * * *
Eternal blessings crown my earliest friend, And round his dwelling guardian saints attend; Blest be that spot where cheerful guests retire To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire; Blest that abode where want and pain repair, And every stranger finds a ready chair; Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crowned, With all the ruddy family around.
—Goldsmith.
* * * * *
What matters if the years depart if Friendship stays unchanged.
—Bingham.
* * * * *
And when two souls are changed and mixed so, It is what they and none but they can do. This, this is friendship, that abstracted flame Which grovelling mortals know not how to name.
—Philips.
* * * * *
By friendship I mean the greatest love and the greatest usefulness, and the most open communication, and the most noble sufferings, and the most exemplary faithfulness, and the severest truth, and the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of mind, of which brave men and women are capable.
—Taylor.
* * * * *
Loved wilt thou be? then love must first by thee be given; No purchase money else avails beneath the heaven.
—Trench.
* * * * *
Friendship is not like love; it cannot say, “Now is fruition give me and now The crown of me is set on mine own brow, This is the minute, the hour, and the day.” It cannot find a moment which it may Call that for which it lived; there is no vow, Nor pledge thereof, nor first-fruits of its bough, Nor harvest, and no myrtle crown nor bay.
* * * * *
I wonder if there is anything in this world as beautiful as good strong friendship between two men? They don’t go round doing the molly coddle act; they don’t kiss each other every time they meet; in fact, they never do kiss each other, unless one is lying cold in death; but they are sure one knows the other is always going to stand by him, and they feel that, no matter what happiness, each can rely on the other.
—Unknown.
* * * * *
Others will kiss you while your mouth is red; Beauty is brief. Of all the guests who come When the lamps shine on flowers, and wine, and bread, In time of famine who will spare a crumb? Therefore, oh, next to God I pray you, keep Yourself as your own friend, the tried, the true, Sit your own watch—others will surely sleep, Weep your own tears, ask none to die with you.
—Piatt.
* * * * *
The end of friendship is a commerce the most strict and homely that can be joined; more strict than any of which we have experience. It is for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of life and death. It is fit for serene days, and graceful gifts, and country rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, ship-wreck, poverty, and persecution. It keeps company with the sallies of wit and the trances of religion. We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man’s life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom and unity. It should never fall into something usual and settled, but should be alert and inventive and add rhyme and reason to what was drudgery.
—Emerson.
* * * * *
Give love, and love to your heart will flow, A strength in your inmost need; Have faith, and a score of hearts will show Their faith in your word and deed.
* * * * *
It is the men and women who believe most, and love best, that win most love.
—Kendall.
* * * * *
If you visit love, kindness, tenderness upon others, what ye mete is measured to you.
—Clarkson.
* * * * *
A friend that you have to buy won’t be worth what you pay for him, no matter what that may be.
—Prentice.
* * * * *
The only true and firm friendship is that between man and woman, because it is the only affection exempt from actual or possible rivalry.
—A. Comte.
* * * * *
To practice a deception is almost to commit a crime. The flow of kindness thus driven back is withdrawn from others whom it might have benefited.
—Carmen Sylva.
* * * * *
Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.
—Emerson.
* * * * *
Absent or present, still to thee, My friend, what magic spells belong! As all can tell, who share like me, In turn thy converse and thy song.
—Byron.
* * * * *
True happiness Consists not in the multitude of friends, But in their worth and choice.
—Jonson.
* * * * *
Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes: they were easiest for his feet.
—Seldon.
* * * * *
Friendship’s an abstract of Love’s noble flame, ’Tis love refined, and purged from all its dross, ’Tis next to angel’s love, if not the same, As strong as passion is, though not so gross. It antedates a glad eternity And is a heaven in epitome.
—Philips.
* * * * *
Distill’d amidst the gloom of night, Dark hangs the dew-drop on the thorn; Till, notic’d by approaching light, It glitters in the smile of morn.
Morn soon retires, her feeble pow’r The sun out-beams with genial day, And gently, in benignant hour, Exhales the liquid pearl away.